DevOps16 - Install Nginx on Ubuntu 16.04

Source: digitalocean.com

Home: 1 - Ubuntu 16.04 user setup; 2 - Install Nginx; 3 - Install Phusion Passenger; 4 - Install MongoDB; 5 - Python venv; 6 - Deploy via Git; 7 - Migrate Mongodb; Various commands

Use sudo user via ssh login for following commands (instead of `root`)

1 - Install Nginx

Update local apt package index.

sudo apt-get update

Install nginx

sudo apt-get install nginx

2 - Adjust the Firewall

Nginx registers itself as a service with ufw, our firewall, upon installation. List application configurations that ufw knows how to work with.

sudo ufw app list

Three (3) profiles should be available for nginx.

Output
Available applications:
  Nginx Full
  Nginx HTTP
  Nginx HTTPS
  OpenSSH

It is recommended to enable the most restrictive profile that will still allow the traffic you’ve configured. Since SSL is not yet configured, only need to allow traffic on port 80 at this time. You can enable this by typing:

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'

Verify the change

sudo ufw status

You should see HTTP traffic allowed in the displayed output:

Output
Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
OpenSSH                    ALLOW       Anywhere                  
Nginx HTTP                 ALLOW       Anywhere                  
OpenSSH (v6)               ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)             
Nginx HTTP (v6)            ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

3 - Check Web Server

At the end of the installation process, Ubuntu 16.04 starts Nginx. The web server should already be up and running.

Check with the systemd init system to make sure the service is running:

systemctl status nginx

Output
● nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2016-04-18 16:14:00 EDT; 4min 2s ago
 Main PID: 12857 (nginx)
   CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service
           ├─12857 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on
           └─12858 nginx: worker process

Verify by accessing the default Nginx landing page through your server’s domain name or IP address. If a domain name is not set up for server, learn how to set up a domain with DigitalOcean here. If you do not want to set up a domain name for your server, use server’s public IP address.

To find IP address from the command line: You will get back a few lines. You can try each in your web browser to see if they work.

ip addr show eth0 | grep inet | awk '{ print $2; }' | sed 's/\/.*$//'

An alternative, should give you your public IP address as seen from another website:

sudo apt-get install curl
curl -4 icanhazip.com

When you have your server’s IP address or domain, enter it into your browser’s address bar:

http://server_domain_or_IP

You should see the default Nginx landing page, which should look something like this:

Step 4: Manage the Nginx Process

Now that you have your web server up and running, we can go over some basic management commands.

To stop web server:

sudo systemctl stop nginx

To start web server when it is stopped:

sudo systemctl start nginx

To stop and then start the service again:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

If simply making config changes, Nginx can often reload without dropping connections. Use:

sudo systemctl reload nginx

To disable Nginx auto-start up at boot:

sudo systemctl disable nginx

To re-enable the service to start up at boot:

sudo systemctl enable nginx

Step 5: Get Familiar with Important Nginx Files and Directories

Now that you know how to manage the service itself, you should take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with a few important directories and files.

Content

/var/www/html: The actual web content, which by default only consists of the default Nginx page you saw earlier, is served out of the /var/www/html directory. This can be changed by altering Nginx configuration files.

Server Configuration

/etc/nginx: The nginx configuration directory. All of the Nginx configuration files reside here.
/etc/nginx/nginx.conf: The main Nginx configuration file. This can be modified to make changes to the Nginx global configuration.
/etc/nginx/sites-available: The directory where per-site “server blocks” can be stored. Nginx will not use the configuration files found in this directory unless they are linked to the sites-enabled directory (see below). Typically, all server block configuration is done in this directory, and then enabled by linking to the other directory.
/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/: The directory where enabled per-site “server blocks” are stored. Typically, these are created by linking to configuration files found in the sites-available directory.
/etc/nginx/snippets: This directory contains configuration fragments that can be included elsewhere in the Nginx configuration. Potentially repeatable configuration segments are good candidates for refactoring into snippets.

Server Logs

/var/log/nginx/access.log: Every request to your web server is recorded in this log file unless Nginx is configured to do otherwise.
/var/log/nginx/error.log: Any Nginx errors will be recorded in this log.

Conclusion

Now that you have your web server installed, you have many options for the type of content to serve and the technologies you want to use to create a richer experience.

Learn how to use Nginx server blocks here. If you’d like to build out a more complete application stack, check out this article on how to configure a LEMP stack on Ubuntu 14.04.

These step-by-step instructions are taken from various tutorials on digitalocean.com, phusionpassenger.com, and other sites. Some sources have been linked. Most step descriptions have been shortened and simplified. Some step sequences are from one source while other may come from various sources.

These instructions and commands are placed on GitHub so I can conveniently find them. I am a novice with Ubuntu, Nginx, Passenger, command line, etc., so I probably can’t answer any questions. However, I’ll be glad to incorporate any corrections that are needed.

Use instructions and commands at your own risk.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.